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Archive for January, 2011

Dublin Dr. Pepper Plant Saves a Cold Journey

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2011| 5 Comments »

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans are fruitless … we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” John Steinbeck.

Icicles on Gypsy Lee as she sits outside my daughter's home on the outskirts of Dallas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

I’m in Dallas. It’s currently 6:30 a.m. and 23 degrees outside, where my RV, Gypsy Lee, is parked on the street. My cocker spaniel and I, however, are warm and snug inside the home of my oldest daughter, Deborah.

 It’s a rare occasion when Maggie and I don’t sleep in our own above-the-cab bed. But since running the heater constantly all night would have drained the battery in my unplugged home, we had no choice.

It’s a day, I decided on waking, for a cozy chair, a blanket to snuggle beneath and a good book. I have all three, the book being Susan Albert’s “An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days,” a writer’s journal.

 It’s also a day that reminds me of the first time Deborah, who thinks spending a night at a Holiday Inn is camping, decided she wanted to experience my vagabond life for a few days. The plan was that I would pick her up in Odessa, Texas, where her contract job had ended, and the two of us would take a few days driving back to Dallas, which was almost 400 miles away.

 When we had made these plans the weather was sunny and warm. The day I picked her up in Odessa, it was cold and rainy. We made it to San Angelo, where we spent the night at Spring Creek Marina and RV Park on Lake Nasworthy. I had stayed here before and loved that I could walk Maggie beside the lake.

That's my daughter, Deborah, on the left during our stop at the Dr. Pepper plant in Dublin, Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

But the next morning was not a day for walking. Icicles hung from my RV and the windows inside had ice on them. We defrosted everything and got back on the road for a miserable day of driving in fog and sleet.

By afternoon, Deborah was ready for a long, hot shower and a warm soft bed. But hot water in my tiny shower is limited and my couch isn’t t exactly soft. We spent the night in a Holiday Inn in the small town of Brownwood – and hoped for a better tomorrow.

It wasn’t.

 We decided to forgo our lollygagging and drive as quickly back to Dallas as Gypsy Lee would take us. As far as giving my daughter a taste of what I consider a fantastic lifestyle, the trip had been a big bust. Then we came to Dublin, Texas, home of the oldest Dr. Pepper plant in the world. More importantly, it’s a rare facility that still uses the original recipe calling for pure cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

My daughter, who loves the original Dr. Pepper, hadn’t known the city was on our route. She was ecstatic and eager to stop. We spent a pleasant hour in the plant’s soda shoppe drinking Dr. Pepper and eating a hamburger lunch. My daughter then bought a couple of cases of the original Dr. Pepper to take home with her.

She was finally a happy camper, one who now knew one of my travel secrets: The unexpected is as important to a successful journey as the weather.

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Strong Women on Display in Dallas

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 10, 2011| 4 Comments »

 

Statue outside entrance to Women's Museum in Dallas -- Photo by Pat Bean

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt.

Travels With Maggie

Hank Williams Jr. loves ’em. I’m talking, of course, about Texas women. But while he prefers them in jeans, I prefer them strong like Texas Governor Anne Richards or Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, both of whom so aptly set a path for Texas women to follow before their deaths.

I like to think of myself as sharing a gene or two in common with them, and also with another of my Texas female heroes, the late outspoken Texas political columnist Molly Ivins, who was mistakenly born in California.

I understood her dilemma from the opposite direction. Utah claimed me for much of the latter half my life, And while I loved its spectacular mountain scenery, I continued to know I was a Texas woman – from the tips of my short blonde hair to the nail on my crooked little toe.

If you’re in the neighborhood of Dallas, where my RV is parked in front of my oldest daughter’s home for the next few days, and want to learn more about strong Texas women – and those from other states as well – you should drop by the Women’s Museum, a permanent exhibit located in Fair Park, home to the Texas State Fair.

My daughter and I did just that, spending several hours roaming the museum’s 70,000 square feet of exhibits that bring to life the contributions of women to this nation’s history. Opened in 2000 in affiliation with the Smithsonian, the museum began as a dream of one woman, Cathy Bonner, and a reality through the financial support of tens of thousands of mostly female supporters.

If you visit before April 10, you can even catch a special exhibit put together by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz and  simply entitled “Women.” The recommendation of this Texas woman is that you should go.

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Perhaps Dallas Will Not Always Be So Hated

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , on January 9, 2011| 3 Comments »

 “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” — Martin Luther King 

A city's reflection -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

Travels With Maggie

“Did you know Dallas is one of the most hated cities in America,” my daughter, Deborah, asked as we sat around the table in her Dallas suburb home yesterday morning. I didn’t, but I’m not surprised, I replied, then began ticking off the reasons why I wasn’t amazed at the news.

 President John Kennedy was shot in Dallas; its police force is infamous for acts of brutality; J. R. Ewing wasn’t exactly a poster child for the city; people love to hate the Dallas Cowboys football team; and Dallas didn’t integrate nicely after the civil rights act was passed.

 There may be other reasons why the pollsters say Dallas will always be one of the top 10 hated cities. These five merely came off the top of my head because I’m a Dallas native who has visited the city yearly since leaving it as a 16-year-old bride. Sadly, in the 1950s that wasn’t an especially uncommon age for Dallas girls to wed.

Not as glamorous as I remember, but the Majestic Theater is still there.

 I watched over the years as flocks of Whites from middle-class neighborhoods moved to the suburbs to escape integration, while those from poor neighborhoods were forced to stay put. The rich, meanwhile, simply sent their kids to private schools. It made for an unbalanced city population.

 I was living south of Houston when JFK was shot. I cried with the world for this loss, but also grieved because he was assassinated in my hometown. That it happened at a place I had passed many times made the tragedy agonizingly vivid for me.

The Glory Window, one of the largest stained glass pieces in the world adorns the ceiling of Thanksgiving Square's chapel. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

 My daughter, Deborah, who was born in Houston, moved to the Dallas Metropolitan area 22 years ago for career reasons. She and I recently took the opportunity to see another side of Dallas. We took the train to downtown, where I showed her some of the places I visited as a child. One of my favorites back then was the Majestic Theater, which is now a performing arts theater owned by the city. I used to take the bus to downtown with my younger brothers on Saturday afternoons to catch an afternoon movie here.

Another placed we visited, Thanksgiving Square, is one that didn’t exist back then. Dedicated in 1976, it’s a city block dedicated as a sanctuary where people of all races and creeds can meet to give thanks. Despite its location in the midst of the city’s bustling skyscrapers, it’s a place that exudes a quiet peacefulness. The square’s glass-stained chapel ceiling, and wall of praise with its Norman Rockwall mosaic depiction of the Golden Rule represents hope for a better future.

 Maybe the pollsters are wrong. Maybe Dallas will one day not be one of the top 10 hated cities.

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Uluru, The Great Wall and Yosemite are Tweeting Me

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 8, 2011| 5 Comments »

 “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on you own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” Dr. Seuss

Ayers/Uluru Rock in Australia Calls to Me -- Five photos stitched together by Stuart Edwards

 

 Travels With Maggie

 I was on the road yesterday, traveling from my oldest son’s home in Harker Heights to my oldest daughter’s home in Rowlett, located just outside Dallas. It was a 170-mile, three-hour drive up Texas’ Highway 35 through Temple, Waco and Waxahatchie, the three cities big enough to be marked in bold on my map.

 I was accompanied by bumper-riding cars and blow-my-small-RV-off-the-road-semis. OK, I exaggerate. Most of the cars allowed a respectable distance between each other and the semis that whizzed past me only created a small crosswind that required me to keep both hands on the wheel. It could have been a monotonous drive.

 Instead I kept myself entertained contemplating the suggestive post to those of us who have taken the pledge to blog daily during 2011. The WordPress moderator asked: What places would you like to visit and why?

First on my list would be Australia, and more specifically, Ayers/Uluru Rock. Located smack dab in the middle of this country that has long fascinated me, I’m not sure exactly why I want to stand beside this huge sandstone monolith that is sacred to the Aborigines. The best I can come up with is that it calls to me. And one of these days soon I intend to answer.

Great Wall of China -- Photo by Jakub Halun

Great Wall of China -- Photo by Jacob Halun

 Second on my list of places I want to visit would be China, where I want to walk on the Great Wall. A designated World Heritage Site, as is Uluru, the wall also calls to me. It’s the man-made equivalent of Australia’s rock island. I’ve long been fascinated with the Mongolian legacy of domination that began with Genghis Khan. The wall failed to keep the nomad hordes out of China and represents, to me, the multitude of guarded borders of today’s world that are proving to be just as ineffective.

 One of these days we’re going to have to accept that we all live on the same planet and if we ever are going to have peace, we’re going to have to learn how to play nicely in the sandbox.

Mirror Lake at Yosemite National Park -- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

 The third place that sits at the top of my list of must-see places is Yosemite National Park. It’s the only western park of significance that I haven’t visited. It’s magnificent scenery calls to me, and this call I plan to answer this fall. I can’t wait to blog about it as one of my daily posts.

 So what places call to you? I would really like to know.

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Imagination Turns Moon Into Cheshire Cat Grin

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2011| 4 Comments »

“Slowly, the grin disappeared, until nothing was left but the cat. This is nearly as scary as the other way around.” — From Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” 

Disney's version of the Cheshire Cat

Travels With Maggie

Early last night I was riding in the car with my granddaughter, Jennifer, and her best friend, Ellen. I had spent the afternoon with the two of them at their home in Temple, Texas, and they were driving me back to my RV in Harker Heights.

 As I looked up at the night sky, I saw the glowing grin of a Cheshire cat. Jennifer and Ellen saw it too. And if you were looking up at the sky last night you probably also saw it. But only if your imagination allowed a glowing sliver of crescent moon to morph into the smile of Lewis Caroll’s fictional cat. Its smile followed us during the entire 30-minute journey.

How John Tenniel envisioned the Cheshire Cat

 Later, as I’m apt to do when I’ve seen something interesting in my travels, I did a bit of research to learn more. My mind, however, was not on phases of the moon but on the cat.

The grin I remembered was a Disney creation. I thought it captured, in a Pollyannish way, the mischievousness of Carroll’s disappearing cat. I saw that the original cat, as envisioned by John Tenniel in the 1860 “Alice in Wonderland” publication, had a more wicked appearance.

Good old Wikipedia said one of Carrol’s inspirations for the cat might have been a smiling gargoyle pillar in St. Nicolas Church in Cranleigh. Looking at a photo of the gargoyle, I saw the resemblance.

St. Nicolas Church gargoyle that might have been Lewis Carroll's inspiration for the Cheshire cat

My research then took me to Cranleigh, about which I knew nothing. I discovered it was a large village in England and that St. Nicolas Church with the gargoyle head is still there, as is a crane-adorned fountain built in 1874.

 Imagination and arm-chair travel: What a great way to spend an evening, When I finally turned out the lights and curled up next to my dog, Maggie, I took one last look out the vent above my bed to see that the moon was still wearing its Cheshire cat grin.

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Fascination Overrides Fear in Longhorn Caverns

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

  “I don’t know anyone who actually likes the dark .. I don’t care how much they say it doesn’t bother them. That’s why we used to huddle in caves and light fires when the sun went down.” — Paul Kane

The entrance to Longhorn Caverns and a journey down dimly lit tunnels. -- Photo by Larry Moore

Travels With Maggie

Just 70 miles away from Harker Heights, where my RV has been parked at my son’s house for almost a month, is Longhorn Caverns State Park. It’s perfect for a getaway day trip. I visited it during an earlier visit with my son, and was glad to have the company.

While I’m quite comfortable doing most things alone, I’m never comfortable in a cave. I have claustrophobia. I can’t even stand to be in a bird blind for more than a few moments before I make a dash for a sky ceiling. I need windows to the outdoor world, preferably with sunlight shinning through them.

And yet caves intrigue me. I seldom pass up an opportunity to go deep into the bowels of the earth where the air smells musky and feels primal. I attribute my ability to overcome my claustrophobia to my stubborn unwillingness to give into fear, a trait that serves me well in my solo travels.

But I’ve also discovered that as long as I keep moving through the dimly lit tunnels with my eyes seeking out the alien underworld formations created by water and time, I can put my claustrophobia temporarily on hold.

Comanches, Confederates and Texas legendary outlaw Sam Bass are said to have used Longhorn Caverns as their hideouts. I guess they weren’t afraid of the dark. As for me, I realized early on that I had to be law-abiding because I would go crazy if someone locked me up.

When my son and I exited the cavern, I drank in the hot Texas air with a feeling of relief.

“Come on,” I told my son. “Let’s go hike the nature trail.” And we did.

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Winter Bares Ink Lake State Park’s Soul

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2011| 1 Comment »

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man (or woman) contemplates it, bearing with him (her) the image of a cathedral.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Devil's Waterhole at Inks Lake State Park. -- Photo by Benjamin Bruce

 

Travels With Maggie

When I sit for awhile, I check out nearby scenic landscapes and interesting places to visit. One of these within easy driving distance of Harker Heights, Texas, where my RV is now resting up, is Inks Lake State Park. It’s just 69 miles away, perfect for a day’s get-away when wanderlust gets the best of Maggie and me.

It’s a special place to me because I camped there with my children in the 1960s. The park was very undeveloped at that time, as were we as campers. Instead of the high-tech tents and camping equipment that eventually found their way among my possessions, we used blankets as sleeping bags and tin foil as cooking equipment.

The park today is quite amenable to campers, with electrical hookups for RV-ers like me and a few cabins for those who are not into tents and sleeping on the ground. It also has nearly eight miles of developed trails which I love to explore.

In spring, this Texas recreation spot park is filled with wildflowers, including Texas’ famous bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, and twittering birds. In winter, I found it a peaceful place where the landscape’s pink, granite rock formations bared their soul.

It’s reasonable to say that both the park and I have come a long way in the passing years.

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Birds and Travel Go Together

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 

A northern mockingbird was my first bird of the new year. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” — Henry Van Dyke

Travels With Maggie

I’m a passionate birdwatcher, who keeps a list of birds I’ve seen. My life list now totals 696 bird species. It’s a respectable number for this late-blooming birder, but far from spectacular.

If you want to know more about the birding numbers game you should read “The Big Year” by Mark Obmascik. It’s a great read even if you aren’t a birder. It’s about three guys who spend a year chasing birds all across North America. At the whisper of a rare bird alert, they would fly thousands of miles on a minute’s notice.

Although I did once drive 400 miles to see one particular bird, these days I usually just bird where my travels take me. I check out bird festivals going on while I’m in the vicinity, and hook up with local Audubon chapters for birding field trips. This past year these efforts, including one day when I hired a guide to help me find the golden-cheeked warbler that I had been trying to find for three years, earned me 12 new life birds. And yes, the warbler was one of them.

I spotted this yellow-crowned night heron at the Sea Center in Lake Jackson, Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

This year’s birding efforts, meanwhile, have begun slower than normal. I’ve been parked in my son’s driveway here in Harker Heights all this week and a cold front moving through the area seems to have kept the birds tucked away.

At least they’re not falling out of the sky dead, as red-winged blackbirds and starlings have been doing in Arkansas the past couple of days. That’s a scary thing because birds, like the canaries coal miners carried into the tunnels with them as their bad air detectors, are indicators of an environment’s health.

My first bird of this new year was a northern mockingbird, appropriate since it’s Texas’ state bird. It was a brilliant gray and white fellow with yellow eyes that landed on a fence about eight feet from my RV window. As I watched, it flashed its long tail in the air – then pooped.

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A Cold Walk Beneath a Warm Sky

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere, the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling, vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming on sea and continents and islands, each it its turn, as the round earth rolls.” — John Muir

Harker Heights, Texas, sunrise, Jan. 3, 2011. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Maggie, who normally likes to sleep in, woke up early this morning and spoke loudly to me with demanding eyes. I am ready for my walk now.

Yes your majesty, I told her as I put on my shoes and bundled up. My MSN home page said it was 35 degrees outside here in Harker Heights, Texas, where my RV is parked in my son’s driveway for the coming week.

A chill went through my body when, with Maggie on her leash, I stepped down from my RV. It wasn’t from the cold, however. It was from the thrill of seeing this morning’s glowing sunrise. I quickly grabbed my camera and captured its warm brilliance  so I could share. 

John Muir has it so right. We don’t have to travel to see the wonders of Mother Nature.

When we got back from our walk, I gave Maggie extra treats for dragging me out into the cold so early. She gobbled them down, then retreated to her favorite spot on our shared bed. She is now serenading me with her funny, soft snores. Life is good.

Travels With Maggie

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About the Author of This Blog

Posted in Uncategorized on January 2, 2011| 3 Comments »

Pat Bean

 Travels With Maggie

 

Maggie

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula k. leGuin

 Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul who is beginning her seventh year living and traveling in a small RV with her 13-year-old cocker Spaniel, Maggie, as her only companion.

Gypsy Lee at Oklahoma Natural Falls State Park

 Both of them get antsy if they have to sit in one place too long. Pat is currently putting the finishing touches on a book she has titled, “Travels With Maggie.” She feels it would fit nicely on any book shelf, or on a Kindle, right next to Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charlie.” At least that’s her dream.

Since beginning their travels in the rolling home they call Gypsy Lee, they have gone over 115,000 miles, and are looking forward to doubling that.

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